1. Field of the Invention
This invention relates generally to data display systems, and more particularly to a system for displaying data in a treemap format.
2. Description of the Related Art
A treemap display is a visual representation of a data set with portions of the data hierarchically represented as two-dimensional cells on a computer display screen. The cells typically have attributes, such as size and color, that represent various characteristics of the data. For example, the size of a cell can represent one characteristic of the data and the color of the cell can represent another characteristic of the data. A computer user can navigate to one of the cells and obtain information about the data characteristics.
A treemap can be used to compactly represent long lists of data that would otherwise be spread over several pages. The data can comprise hundreds or even thousands of data elements, each element being represented by one of the cells on the treemap display. While it can be convenient to represent such a multitude of data in a single treemap, there are also drawbacks that arise as the amount of data increases. For example, as the quantity of data elements represented on a treemap is increased, the quantity of cells on the treemap also increases. This can result in a single treemap with thousands of cells, many of which are so small in size that they become indiscernible from other cells on the treemap. Thus, the treemap loses the ability to efficiently display various aspects of a complex data set using cell size and color because the small cell size makes it difficult to discern one cell from another cell on the treemap, making navigation of the display difficult.
From the discussion above, it should be apparent that there is a need for an improved method of creating a treemap that represents large data sets. The present invention fulfills this need.